Yesterday was White Ribbon Day, to protest against violence against women, and domestic violence especially. We are not 100% sure if that is what this excellent and thought-provoking poem is about, (it’s a poem, after all, and therefore open to interpretation), but that’s how it speaks to us. Strongly.

We love the way the poem builds in intensity through a repeated motif. This is very skillful writing.

Last weekend the world thrilled to the fun of the Eurovision Song Contest. But now the shooting of a 19-year-old woman following an appearance singing on TV is bringing violence against women in Turkey to light. Mutlu Kaya was shot in the head southeastern Turkey’s Diyarbakir, in what is the most recent in a string of high-profile attacks on women in the country. Her crime? Singing. That’s it.

Such cases have brought attention to a rising tide of violence against women in Turkey. According to Bianet, a Turkey-based NGO and news source, there was a 31 percent increase in murders of women by men between 2013 and 2014. Researchers place the number of women murdered in 2014 at nearly 300.

According to local media, Kaya began receiving death threats from her extended family after being selected to appear on national TV in Sesi Cok Guzel, a talent competition in the vein ofAmerica’s Got Talent. Kaya was shot in the head while at home early Monday morning. She was rushed to a local hospital before being moved to a larger hospital in Diyarbakir, where she remains in intensive care.

Although it has yet to be confirmed, it is reported that Kaya was threatened by her extended family for going to Istanbul to participate in the contest — there is speculation that the attack was motivated by Kaya’s choice to step outside of traditional gender roles.

Degir Deniz

Kaya’s shooting comes on the heels of two other high-profile murders. On May 5th, the body of a popular 39-year old singer-songwriter, Deger Deniz, was found strangled in her Istanbul home.

Her burned and mutilated body was later found in a creek outside of town.

Aslan’s murder sparked an outcry against violence against women in Turkey. Protesters – including men wearing miniskirts to show solidarity – took to the streets.

Ozgecan Aslan

Hundreds of thousands women tweeted their experiences with sexism, gender-based violence and harassment under the hashtag #sendeanlat, which translates to “you tell your story too.”

In the aftermath of Ozgecan’s murder, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that violence against women is Turkey’s “bleeding wound.” However, the AKP has repeatedly placed a paternalistic emphasis on women only within their context as mothers and daughters. Erdogan went on to call on men to protect women, based on their relationship to men: “I call on gentlemen occupying most of the important decision-making positions: This could have happened to our daughters as well.”

Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development party (AKP) has been widely criticised for its stance on women’s issues. The party renamed the Ministry for Women and Family as the Ministry of Family and Social Policy, positioning their focus not on women’s rights but on women as just one of many at-risk social groups. And in 2014, one of the party’s most senior members, Bulent Arinc, said that women should “be humble and protect their chasteness. They should not laugh out loud in public,” prompting an avalanche of tweets of women doing just that.

At a women’s conference in Istanbul in 2014, Erdogan said that to put women as equal to men is “against nature” because they are “delicate.”

Speaking on a BBC podcast, The Inquiry: Is Life Getting Worse For Women In Erdogan’s Turkey? in March, Professor Deniz Kandiyoti, who specializes in gender relations in Turkey at the University of London, said of the AKP’s rhetoric: “what trickles down of course is that some women are worthy of protection. Other women: it’s open season.”

To see this happening in what was always touted as the most Westernised and secular Muslim state in the world is especially distressing. To be sure, familial violence against women is a cultural issue not a primarily religious one – it occurs in Christian and Hindu communities too – but it would be hoped that the fitfully modernising trend of a country like Turkey would reduce its prevalence and set an example of tolerance to the rest of the region.

18 year old Amina Bibi being rushed to hospital, still awake, after her attempt to burn herself to death. She died later.

A distraught Pakistani teenager died Friday after setting herself on fire after a court dropped charges against four men accused of raping her, police said, effectively accusing her of lying over the attack.

The incident occurred in Muzaffargarh district of Punjab province, where the horrific 2002 gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, an illiterate women, made headlines around the world.

Amina Bibi, who was aged 18 according to police, doused herself with petrol and set herself alight on Thursday in front of a police station in the village of Beet Meer Hazar.

She was taken to a nearby government-run hospital where the doctors tried to save her but succumbed to her injuries early on Friday, police said.

She was allegedly assaulted by four men, including a family member, in early January and reported the incident to police.

But a local court in Muzaffargarh dropped the case on Thursday following a police report which said she had not been raped, prompting Bibi to take the desperate measure.

“Nadir, the main accused in the case was a relative of the victim and they had a family dispute,” senior local police official Chaudhry Asghar Ali told AFP.

“The case was investigated twice and investigators discovered that the victim had not been raped.”

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday demanded an explanation for the incident, ordering the provincial police chief and district police chief to appear in the court in person.

The court ordered police to file a written report explaining how the case was investigated and why the accused men were cleared.

The Punjab police chief’s spokeswoman said an investigation team had been sent to the area to investigate.

“We have sent an enquiry team to the area and have suspended the police officials who were investigating the case”, Nabeela Ghazanfar, spokeswomen of the Punjab police chief told AFP.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded the government take steps to ensure rapists are brought to justice.

“Her sacrifice has exposed the ordeals that rape victims in the country face when they try to bring their tormentors to justice,” the group said.

“It is common knowledge that only the courageous rape victims in Pakistan take the matter to the police or court.”

Physical and sexual violence against women are widespread in Pakistan, a deeply conservative, patriarchal Muslim country.

One of Pakistan’s most infamous sex crimes against women, Mukhtar Mai’s 2002 rape and survival transformed her into an international rights icon.

Yet another case that demonstrates the desperate plight of women in a variety of cultures around the world. The West urgently needs to use every lever in its arsenal to encourage authorities and opinion formers in these areas to elevate the status of women, institute contemporary protocols for dealing with accusations of rape, to combat anti-women violence generally, and start to institute the long march to equality of opportunity and treatment denied to great swathes of half of humankind.

We could also do a lot worse than leading by example, by continuing our patchwork efforts to make the whole world safe for women, including in our own countries, where such progress as we have made often continues to be painfully slow.

Last year, the fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus sparked protests around India which as a result toughened its rape laws, and police said that they were doing everything in their power to prevent rape and sexual assault.

At a recent meeting about illegal gambling, the chief of one of India’s top investigative forces, Ranjit Sinha, said, “If you can’t prevent rape, you may as well enjoy it.”

Sinha has since said that his comments were taken out of context, but no context could make this attitude acceptable especially as Sinha leads the Central Bureau of Investigation in India.

India is struggling with a wave of violence against women which has prompted widespread debate about social attitudes and has damaged its image overseas.

In December last year, a 23-year-old student died of internal injuries suffered during a gang rape by six men after she boarded a private bus in south Delhi. Four men were sentenced to death for the attack in September at a special fast-track court in the capital. A juvenile has also been convicted. The alleged ringleader of the assault hanged himself in prison.

Further incidents of multiple rapes or sexual assaults are now regularly reported by Indian media.

“Do we have the enforcement?” Sinha said after being asked if sports betting, which is banned in India but widespread, should be legalised. “It is very easy to say that if you can’t enforce it, it’s like saying if you can’t prevent rape, you [should] enjoy it.”

His remarks outraged campaigners and politicians.

Kavita Krishnan, an activist with the All India Progressive Women’s Association, called for Sinha to step down.”How can he remain the head of India’s premier investigation agency?” she said.

Brinda Karat, leader of the Communist party of India (Marxist), said Sinha’s comments were offensive to women everywhere. “It is sickening that a man who is in charge of several rape investigations should use such an analogy,” Karat told reporters. “He should be prosecuted for degrading and insulting women.”

The CBI, which has a role similar to that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US, was set up to fight corruption by government employees, but also investigates other important cases, including murder, rape and terrorism.

Local law enforcement officials have repeatedly been criticised for their attitudes towards sexual violence. Indian police estimate that only four out of 10 rapes are reported as officers often fail to take complaints of sexual violence seriously. Victims are also often stigmatised or ostracised by their own communities following an attack.

Wellthisiswhatithink says: Rape is one of the most common crimes against women in India, and police attitudes are frequently lackadaisical towards it. It’s therefore doubly disgusting that a high-ranking Indian policeman would suggest that women try to “enjoy” this horrifying, traumatizing ordeal rather than actively working to prevent it.

We urge you to click the link in the second paragraph above, and demand Sinha’s resignation. And if he won’t resign, he should immediately be sacked.

Sinha has apologized for his remarks, but we can’t let this incident get pushed under the rug.

In the case discussed at the head of this article, the victims, a 23-year-old woman and a male friend, were on their way home on the night of 16 December 2012 after watching the film Life of Pi in Saket, South Delhi. They boarded an off-duty charter bus at Munirka for Dwarka that was being driven by joyriders at about 9:30 pm. There were only six others in the bus, including the driver. One of the men, a minor, had called for passengers telling them that the bus was going towards their destination. The woman’s friend became suspicious when the bus deviated from its normal route and its doors were shut. When he objected, the group of six men already on board, including the driver, taunted the couple, asking what they were doing alone at such a late hour.

When the woman’s friend tried to intervene, he was beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious with an iron rod. The men then dragged the woman to the rear of the bus, beating her with the rod and raping her while the bus driver continued to drive. Medical reports later said that the woman suffered serious injuries to her abdomen, intestines and genitals due to the assault, and doctors said that the damage indicated that a blunt object (suspected to be the iron rod) may have been used for penetration. That rod was later described by police as being a rusted, L-shaped implement of the type used as a wheel jack handle. According to police reports the woman attempted to fight off her assailants, biting three of the attackers and leaving bite marks on the accused men. After the beatings and rape ended, the attackers threw both victims from the moving bus. Then the bus driver allegedly tried to drive the bus over the woman, but she was pulled aside by her male friend. One of the perpetrators later cleaned the vehicle to remove evidence. Police impounded it the next day.

There has been a lot of hoo-hah in Australia in recent days over an Elle McPherson Intimates catalogue that shows a woman in what some women argue is a demeaning position. The photo in question is here:

The assumption is that the woman on the floor has been the subject of domestic violence, although some have also wondered if she was doing a “line” of coke or simply trying to get a stain off the carpet.

The furore reminded me of this billboard from a couple of years ago:

At the time, a complaint against the billboard (one of some 60 received) was dismissed because the powers that be regarded it as a “satirical comment on a patriarchal society”.

Which I frankly call “bullsh*t”. The billboard is clearly sexist, and in our view fighting fire with fire only results in, er, bigger fires.

For what it’s worth, I think the McPherson pic is yet another example of “Dom-Sub chic” neo-porn, which given the runaway success of a book (I use the word cautiously) like Fifty Shades of Grey seems hardly a surprising tactic, and which is popping up everywhere.

Fashion? Porn? Erotica? Just great photography? How do you tell? And does it matter? Why?

The recent story from the fire brigade bemoaning how many times they’re called on to free people from handcuffs where they’ve left the key out of reach would seem to imply that what might once have been considered extreme has become more mainstream, albeit somewhat incompetently.

Heigh ho, Whatever gets you through the night.

What is clearly impossible to ascribe to any such image, of course, is any sense or understanding of “consent”, or otherwise. Because a woman (or man) assumed to be adopting a consensual submissive role might be acceptable, whereas a depiction of a rape or other anti-personal violence clearly would not. (Well, not in our opinion, anyhow.) But how does one know from a still image?

How on earth the reader or viewer is intended to work out the difference, sometimes, is quite beyond our ken.

Last week, activists (or as I prefer to call them, civilised people with a conscience) launched a campaign that urged companies to boycott Facebook advertising because the social media network allows users to post images of domestic violence against women, while banning advertisements about women’s health.

More than a dozen companies have pulled their advertising as a result, including online bank Nationwide UK, Nissan UK, and J Street.

But many larger companies – including some who should definitely know better – have been slower to respond, including two companies that market brands specifically to women.

Dove, a Unilever brand that is running a “self-esteem” ad campaign for women, is facing pressure on Twitter, while Procter & Gamble’s response was, “We can’t control what content they [our advertising] pops up next to. Obviously it’s a shame that our ad happened to pop up next to it.”

Pathetically, Zappos replied that users who are upset by an ad appearing next to a date rape image “click the X to delete the ad.”

Equally wimpishly, Zipcar has not stopped advertising but “expressed to Facebook the critical need to block this content from appearing.” Who-hoo.

And Audible.com has responded that it will not take down advertising, because it “takes pride in and respects the rules that govern our Facebook community.” Blah, blah, blah.

Facebook’s rules, however, appear to be enforced unevenly.

A Facebook spokesperson told ThinkProgress that content featuring battered women, rape, and violence falls under “poor taste” or “crude attempts at humor” and does not violate its policies.

And while Facebook screens anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, and homophobic hate speech, the same standards do not apply to images of violence against women.

But at the same time, the astonishingly conservative and out-of-touch Facebook rejected an ad about breast cancer because it showed a woman’s breast. Presumably because, you know, breasts are “dirty”.

At Wellthisiswhatithink we have a simple message for Zuckerberg and his cronies. This is not humour. This is incitement to violence. It should be illegal – it sure as hell should not be on Facebook. Fix it.

And if you agree, you might like to post a link to this article somewhere. Like Facebook, for example.

Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Picard, has just given us yet another reason to love him:

I grew up in a home darkened by domestic violence – which I wrote about two years ago. My father was an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions, or his hands. I witnessed violence against my mother and felt powerless to stop it. When Refuge, the national domestic violence charity, asked me to become a patron, I accepted without hesitation. I accepted for my mother. As a child, there was little I could do to help her. But now I can give support and encouragement to women who live in the same sort of fear that she did.

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Refuge – along with other women’s charities – is facing its toughest year to date. The gradual erosion of statutory funding has made Refuge even more reliant on…